Nerdist Podcast: Dr. Drew

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Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of Loveline and Dr. Drew On Call on HLN, sits down with Chris to discuss the different types of rehab for addicts, Chris’s process to get sober, the influence media has had on society, and his own battle with cancer!

I’m dealing with the aftermath of a horrible breakup that has torn me down like I’ve never experienced before. This episode did so much to help me understand myself and what I’m trying to process. Thanks for this Chris.

I love this. It’s raw, candid, and very earnest. While I’m not an addict in the traditional sense, I spent three years “addicted” to food and purging due to bulimia. I’m also bipolar, codependent, suffer from anxiety, and a survivor of an abusive situation. We all have baggage — some is heavier than others. I firmly believe that Dr. Drew has saved MANY lives, and as a recovering “addict” it’s very solidifying to hear these stories, discuss progress, and hear professional concerns about over-medication. I nearly killed myself due to bad medication combinations. Thanks for sharing this, Chris, and reminding me that there’s a whole lot of messy, baggage-laden people like me that understand my struggles. Keep up the great work!

Say what you will about Dr. Drew, but the fact remains that he has saved lives. He has dedicated himself to helping addicts, people who go,out of their way on a daily basis to do harm to themselves. Individuals who are difficult to work with, unreliable, and fight the help the receive. In working with addicts no program or doctor is going to have a 100% success rate. Of course he has his own program, but he says in the podcasts, whatever works. I think anyone who has suffered from addiction, watched someone struggle, or seen the temptation can appreciate what he is trying to do.

Hey! I am enjoying the look of the new site! One thing tho… would you consider putting the images back for the earlier nerdist podcasts? It’s easier if you can recognize a face and a name. (and the artwork was pretty cool too) Big fan! I’m going back and listening to the early hostful episodes.

This was an excellent podcast Chris! Been looking forward to this episode for a while now.

I always hear Drew on Loveline or on one of his own podcasts, on all of which he’s always solving other people’s problems. It was very refreshing to hear him talk about some of his own struggles he’s had to deal with.

Loved the episode, even though I know Dr. Drew has gotten some bad press in recent years, he still seems very knowledgable. Also, for some reason I was little surprised, but amused, to hear him swear on here. He always seems so calm! Anyways, can’t wait for the next one! Thanks Chris!

That’s one thing I like about the guest podcasts — they get to actually talk, and they seem comfortable talking. I did find this one surprisingly interesting, and I think it made me realize that, while I may still have reservations about Dr. Drew’s contribution to media, the contributions he’s made to people off camera is obviously real.

So here’s a bunch of honesty/oversharing. I’m not familiar with much of Dr. Drew’s work. The latest thing I heard regarding him was a bit from a popular comic saying Dr. Drew wasn’t to be trusted! So anyway, here’s my story of why I think this episode was amazing (at least for me). I’ve been sober for about two months. I’m 30 and about to move to L.A. in August to pursue some creative blah blah blah. About two months ago I stopped drinking. Cold turkey. I wanted to get my mind right for the big move and life change. I’ve worked out every day since I quit drinking, sometimes twice a day. I’ve dropped 15 pounds so far. I’m feeling good about myself. And then… today. I wake up. I work out. I spent a few early morning hours writing. I spent the bulk of the day working for my “pay the bills” marketing job. The girlfriend is out of town. It’s a slow week for TV entertainment. Ah! Nothing to watch! I read some good sci-fi lit for a little bit. I get restless. I end up at the grocery story buying a few bottles of wine. I always needed a few bottles to do the trick in the past. I get home. I pour a glass. It sits there for a while, untouched. I pick it up. I sniff. I put it back down. Eventually, I take a drink. Sorry, this isn’t a story about overcoming the temptation to drink; it’s a story about starting to deal with your shit. I put on the latest episode of the Nerdist podcast. I shit you not, it’s exactly what I needed to hear today. I mean, some real serendipitous shit. It didn’t stop me from drinking, that’s on me of course. But as I checked the box next to every character trait Dr. Drew mentioned were associated with codependency, some things started to click that hadn’t before. (Aside: Recently, my girlfriend had surgery. I’d stopped drinking, so I sneaked a few Vicodins – after she stopped taking them, I’m not a monster! – The pills did nothing for me.) To wrap this up, thanks so much for this episode. It’s not like I’m suddenly fixed. But it’s always nice to hear similar stories and walk away from a podcast with new tools and knowledge going forward. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. (Also, I’ve only had two drinks and the bottle is corked so I’m pretty sure this isn’t a slobbery, inane post in the comments.) Inspiration comes in all forms, folks. If this wasn’t yours, then know it was mine.

I’ve been following Drew and his work for almost 20 years. I think that he gets a bad rap, partially because of some of the things he mentioned on this episode (i.e. his own personal traits make him seem like/be a media whore) and partially because there’s so much misinformation in the public about his areas of expertise.

Could he cool it with all of the tv shows and podcasts? Sure. It makes him look bad. Could you say that some of his programs seem to be exploitative? Depends on your point of view. But if you were to weigh it all out in the end, I know he’s helped scores more people in his 30 years in the public eye than he may or may not have hurt. Chris is one of those people. I’m one of those people.

If you heard the things people ask on Loveline, you’d understand the overall good the Drew and people like Drew are doing.

I said nothing about Chris’s motives and have no idea what Chris would hope to gain by his reasoned and well thought out response.
You don’t need to believe me, do the tiniest bit of Googling and it’s incredibly easy to find massive amounts of concern over what Drew does and why.
Drew gets a bad rap because he is a crook. He places people’s lives in danger to generate drama to make himself money and be a TV star. He has admitted as much.He has utterly zero respect amoung his peers and the national center for addiction has spoken out about his methods on multiple occasions.
The freaking Department of Justice found that he took $300,000 dollars from Smith-Kline to “promote Wellbutrin in settings where it does not appear that you are promoting Wellbutrin”. After claiming that the drug may make people experience multiple orgasms (bullshit) he received a person letter from Smith-Kline thanking him for promoting their message.
I can go on and on, forever, he may think he is going good but he is scrambling over the health and happiness of people with real problems to promote himself and be rich and famous.
His mismanagement of Mike Starr’s case led directly to Mike’s death.
Man, it goes on and on. Fucking do your homework.

I would upvote your message but I don’t have an account. All you have to do is watch his HLN show, which gives scumbags like Ann Coulter equal time and spends hours “examining” murder cases in the most tabloid, exploitative manner possible. His show glamorizes murderers and advances the “video games create murderers” BS.

I would sooner take the medical advice of Dr. Dre than I would Dr. Drew.

Actually.
“The tiniest bit of googling” is sorta the problem. Drew is by no real accounts a crook, and your usage of that term speaks for itself.
The GSK case involved him saying that Welbutrin caused fewer negative sexual side-effects than other similar medications (which is true, if you wanna continue investigoogling, instead of stopping when you find something which confirms your own beliefs). But because this was not an approved FDA statement, and what we’re really talking about here are technicalities that were blown out of proportion,

But this post is going to get long, so I’ll give you a TL;DR of why most everything in your post is wrong and or lies you made up in a tantrum:

-Not a crook;
-Did not say Welbutrin causes multiple orgasms; -Has placed no lives in danger, only shown lives which were already in danger;
-He has not to “admitted as much”, ever re: your bizarre claim; -The “National Center for Addiction” does not exist, you mean the National Institute for Drug Abuse;-The NIDA has not has not “spoken out about his methods on multiple occasions”, and you don’t seem to understand the differences of opinion to which you refer;
-Mike Starr et al died firstly because they were severe drug addicts, and secondly because they refused to get/left treatments. If you want to mention Starr in particular, he relapsed on prescription meds and then, instead of committing himself to sobriety, decided to move away from his support system to another state, and then eventually overdosed and died do to the combination of meds that he was doing. Dr. Drew was not his personal doctor at the time, but did speak with Starr before his departure and pleaded with him not to leave.

TL;DR- You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I would suggest you not advise people with statements such as “fucking do your homework”, when you were wrong about literally everything you posted.

The issue in the DoJ lawsuit was specifically about accepting money to promote a particular drug. Dr. Drew’s public response was that he had participated in a study that happened to be funded by Glaxo Smith Kline and anything he said related to the drug was a byproduct of his actual findings during the course of the study. The public perception problem is that Glaxo DID pay doctors to endorse their drugs, AND you could very reasonably argue that even being a paid participant in a study funded by a drug company is an inherent conflict of interest. It’s entirely possible that Dr. Drew was truly only interested in the study and had no ulterior motive, but, from an outside perspective, it doesn’t look good–particularly in an age where we know drug companies aren’t generally operating with the best interests of people in mind. All that said, it doesn’t help Dr. Drew’s image that he often participates in media programming that comes off as more voyeuristic than informative. HOWEVER, there’s no question that he has positively impacted some peoples’ lives. It’s tricky because the public know him as a pop culture persona, more than a doctor, so some people will always assume everything he says is suspect.

Lj, I think a lot of the hate you see for Drew on the internet is due to comments that he’s made about marijuana that are taken out of context.

The pro-marijuana crowd online is a pretty rabid bunch. So they don’t like it when Drew points out that the medical marijuana industry is a largely a sham. I know several people with medical marijuana licenses, 100% of them just made up some BS about anxiety issues so they could get their card. Drew has said multiple times that when he sees peer-reviewed journals that say marijuana is a good medicine, he’ll be happy to prescribe it.

The other reason marijuana advocates hate Drew is because he has treated people for marijuana addiction, which goes against their popular belief that marijuana isn’t addictive. The reality of course is that people can become addicted to absolutely anything, even if the addiction is purely mental.

By the way, I’m not anti-marijuana at all, in fact I am in support of full legalization. I just hate when people hear one thing about somebody like Drew and jump to conclusions.

Well, in fairness to some of the criticism, I think the particular medium he chooses to communicate with is what people are responding to. I’m not sure it’s about the quantity of media Dr. Drew does so much as the quality. I think it’s when you see him with a split screen of 10 other people–some of whom have no expertise in anything–speculating about the mental health of someone on trial, that you start to question the efficacy of whatever message he’s going for. There’s an argument to be made that some of the commentary he provides is on a network or show that’s deliberately crafting the most puerile and salacious angle of something that’s arguably not news to begin with. It’s one thing to deconstruct a situation to come up with a suggestion that might challenge people to think about things in a different way–it’s another thing entirely to simply point and a train crash and come up with a litany of possible narratives for all the people on the train and why it crashed. And, based on some of his TV shows and appearances, I genuinely can’t tell what his motivations are.